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President Barack Obama said last night at a Democratic fundraiser in Rhode Island that the terrorism from ISIS "doesn’t immediately threaten the homeland." The reason? The security measures taken by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to Obama.

First the president said the situation in the Middle East is "scary," according to a transcript of the event released by the White House.

"I don’t have to tell you, anybody who has been watching TV this summer, it seems like it is just wave after wave ofupheaval, most of it surrounding the Middle East. You’re seeing a change in the order in the Middle East. But the old order is having a tough time holding together and the new order has yet to be born, and in the interim, it’s scary."

Then he told the Democratic donors not to worry because measures put in place by Bush and Cheney "make us ... pretty safe."

"The good news is that we actually have a unprecedented military capacity, and since 9/11 have built up a security apparatus that makes us in the here and now pretty safe. We have to be vigilant, but this doesn’t immediately threaten the homeland. What it does do, though, is it gives a sense, once again, for future generations, is the world going to be upended in ways that affect our kids and our grandkids."

Of course, Obama, who has blamed much on his predecessor, did not name Bush and Cheney.

But who "built up a security apparatus" after 9/11? President George W. Bush, with the assistance of his faithful vice president, Dick Cheney.

After crediting Republicans for keeping America safe, Obama went on to blame Republicans for making Washington dysfunctional:

I want to focus on this last thing, this third thing about -- that Washington doesn’t work. The tendency is to portray this as a problem with the system and a problem with both parties: politicians are corrupt, and there’s too much money, and the lobbyists have all this influence, and it doesn’t really matter who’s in charge -- no matter what, Washington doesn’t work.

And I’m here to assert -- although I admit that this is probably preaching to the choir -- that this is not a problem that both Democrats and Republicans suffer from. Democrats have their problems, Lord knows. Nancy, she deals with a caucus that occasionally is challenging. The Senate, by its nature, means that people have their quirky approaches to things. There are times where we’re too dogmatic about certain things, not flexible enough; we’re too captive to particular interests. It’s politics. It’s not perfect.

But the fact of the matter is, is that every time I came to Nancy Pelosi when she was Speaker and there was a tough issue, and the question was, were we going to do the right thing even if it was politically unpopular, Nancy and the democratic caucus in the House would step up and do it. And we had a whole bunch of people lose their seats because they thought it was the right thing to do.

The fact of the matter is, every time there has been the possibility of compromise on big issues like how we deal with our deficits and our debt, as unpalatable as it has sometimes been, we have been willing to put forward agendas that try to allow us to govern and meet Republicans more than half way.

This is not some equivalence between the parties. The reason government does not work right now is because the other party has been captured by an ideological, rigid, uncompromising core that ignores science, is not particularly interested in facts, is not particularly interested in compromise, but is interested in having its own way 100 percent of the time -- and that way, in large part, includes dismantling so much of what has created this incredible middle class and this incredible wealth here in America.